Pants Hang Low

AUGUSTA, Ga.—The local sagging pants debate began more than a year ago on News 12. It may be coming to a dramatic halt. A bid to send saggers to etiquette school failed.

A bid to send saggers to etiquette school failed, and that’s before the real test even begins. The commission says it’s can’t be enforced.

Commissioner Corey Johnson, the guy making the recommendation, took his bid off the table. This comes after his original call to send violators to school got downgraded to a small mention in the current indecent exposure law. The whole idea was to keep people out of jail. That’s where things got sticky.

“That’s reality,” said Commissioner Johnson. “We have to be realistic about it. We will be infringing upon the rights of expression if we do that. So I had to look at the bigger picture.”

“One thing we cannot do is legislate morality,” said commissioner Calvin Holland. “We cannot legislate self respect, but we want our community, especially our young people, to know we are very much concerned.”

The folks in Hyde Park are also concerned after years of battling alleged contamination. The community is now taking matters in their own hands. They are starting by calling for the Hyde Park sub-committee chair Don Grantham to step down.

Continue reading the article at WRDW

Think of it as a crackdown on cracks.

Augusta Commissioner Corey Johnson says the city needs a law against sagging pants, a fashion fad he says has young men dressed as though they’re looking for prison sex.

Unlike ordinances passed in other communities that have raised the ire of civil rights advocates, his version would only cite those whose low belt lines cause “exposure of the buttocks.”

“I’m not trying to infringe on anybody’s rights,” Mr. Johnson said. “I just want young people to think about what they’re doing.”

The trend, popularized by hip-hop artists, originated in penal institutions, where inmates are denied belts and strings to prevent strangulations.

In the free world, saggers usually wear baggy jeans around their thighs or just above the knees, exposing boxer shorts. The town of Delcambre, La., first outlawed the practice in June 2007, and other bans have been passed in Connecticut and the Georgia towns of Hahira, Hawkinsville and Warner Robins.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said that the laws are unconstitutional infringements on free expression that unfairly target young blacks.

Proposed bans are pending in Atlanta and Charleston, S.C. In October, the Waynesboro City Council approved a first reading of an ordinance imposing fines and community service for pants worn three inches below the pelvis, with a final reading expected early next month.

Mr. Johnson’s proposed change to Augusta’s public indecency ordinance will come up for a vote at the Dec. 2 commission meeting. Staff attorney Andrew MacKenzie said at the Public Service Committee meeting Monday that the rule wouldn’t stir as much controversy because it prohibits exposure of body parts, not shorts.

According to a draft, violators doing nothing else wrong could not be arrested or searched. They would be summoned to court and subject to fines of $25 to $150 and eight hours of community service. Minors would be turned over to juvenile court.

We know that this mainly belt-less, sagging pants phenomenon, popularized by black teenage boys, comes from the penal culture. Its antecedent is the popular “do-rag” that’s been a standard in black, inner-city culture for at least two generations.

So many black boys and young men are on the streets, in shopping centers, clubs and elsewhere looking like targets for arrest to law-enforcement personnel, suburbanites and tourists. Generally, people fear black youth – especially black adults who ride the buses with them and live among them.

Sagging-pants-wearing black males who blatantly exhibit their underwear as style are also sending a cryptic message to society to kiss their behinds for leaving them behind. Their uniform tells all that they are soldiers in the army of those who are mis-educated and forgotten: a new nihilistic foreign legion of a sort.

Countless black girls become young adults and mothers of two or more children with different fathers and no husband. Most of these teenage girls enter adulthood living in an extended family situation with their children, usually with a female head of household that is generational – with mother and/or mother and grandmother.

Young girls are taught to exude their sexuality to be popular, to be wanted, often when barely out of adolescence and sometimes before adolescence. Listening to rap and soul-singers, learning the latest sex-driving gyrations called dancing, and seeking the boys tend to dominate the lives of many girls who are not lucky enough to be involved in organized activities. If that’s not the bull’s eye for black teenage pregnancies and HIV/AIDS, it’s pretty darn close.

Continue Reading the South Florida Times article…

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama may not necessarily support lifestyle legislation — including state bans on low-slung, sagging trousers — but that doesn’t mean he thinks dudes should be showing off their skivvies.

On Saturday, MTV News’ own Sway led our exclusive interview with Obama in Henderson, Nevada, just days before Tuesday’s historic election. Armed with questions submitted by MTV viewers, Sway discussed a number of critical topics with the presidential hopeful, including California’s controversial Proposition 8 (the state ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage), education, gun violence and civil liberties. (Tune in to “Ask Obama” tonight when it airs on MTV at 7 p.m. ET, and on MTV Tr3s at 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. ET.)

But he also answered a question from Eric, who lives in Huntington Beach, California, about lifestyle legislation like anti-sagging-pants ordinances, which have either been added to the books or are being considered in more than eight states (and has even inspired a song from rapper Plies). Eric wanted to know what Obama thinks of such legislation, and asked whether he feels those mandates intrude on civil liberties.

Continue reading the MTV.com article…